1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for determining, when a document under management by a document management system was opened by an application different from a document management application, whether the document was printed, and to a technique for using the result of the determination.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is considered that the importance of each document is determined based on the number of times of viewing and the number of times of printing of each document managed by the document management system.
A technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-122685 acquires the importance of each document based on a viewing log. Specifically, the technique determines a document identifier (ID) of the viewing log recorded in a viewing log database of a document management server and acquires the number of times of viewing of a document having a document ID=i. The technique further acquires the importance of each document based on a print log. Specifically, the technique determines a document ID of the print log recorded in a print log database of a print server and acquires the number of times of printing of a document having a document ID=i. The technique integrates the importance based on the viewing log and the importance based on the print log to determine the importance of the document having a document ID=i.
The technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-122685 requires that the document ID recorded in the viewing log and the document ID recorded in the print log are identical.
However, a general document management server gives an original document ID to each document (file) to enable document management by the document management server. On the other hand, the print server, when receiving a print job from various application programs and performing print processing, gives a print log ID to each print job, and records each print job in the print log. This causes a problem that the document ID recorded in the viewing log of the document management server and the print log ID recorded in the print log of the print server are not identical in many cases.
On the other hand, recording as an operation log all operations performed on the document management system instead of using the print log of the print server is assumed to enable determining whether a print operation was instructed for a document managed by the document management system. Specifically, the document management system including a document management server and a document management client records print operations performed on the document management client in the operation log of the document management server, and determines based on the operation log that a document managed by the document management server was printed. A print operation in the document management client includes selecting a desired document from a document list displayed by a document management client application, and selecting “PRINT” from an operation menu of the document management client application. Thus, when “PRINT” is selected from the operation menu of the document management client application, a print operation is recorded in the operation log of the document management server.
However, a general document management system downloads a document managed by the document management server to a client personal computer (PC) enables an application different from the document management client application (hereinafter referred to as external application) to open the relevant document. For example, a document file locally downloaded from the document management server can be opened by using an external application such as a word processor application and a spreadsheet application. When a user activates an external application, opens a document, and performs print operation for the document, operations performed by the external application are not recorded in the operation log of the document management server. Therefore, print operations performed by the external application are not recorded in the operation log, either. Specifically, when PRINT is executed from the operation menu of the external application, since printing is instructed out of the management by the document management system, the document management system cannot record the print operation and therefore cannot determine whether the relevant document was printed.
Such a problem arising when a document is opened and printed by using an external application also arises under environmental conditions as in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-122685. Specifically, when a print operation is performed by using an external application out of the management by the document management server, the print job ID recorded in the print server cannot be identical to the document ID recorded in the document management server. In this case, therefore, it becomes difficult to calculate the importance by using the number of times of printing for a document managed by the document management server.